Roast your favorite anime.

Everyone has a favorite anime for a reason, either they got immersed in the story and the characters, or it made some message that resonated with you, but there's that one anime that hit every switch and every bell with you. But not every anime is perfect. So I figured this would be a healthy exercise in playing Devil's Advocate.

Roast your favorite anime. Say a few things that maybe you didn't like, or you think others wouldn't like when watching the show for the first time.

My favorite anime: Honey and Clover

It is really slow, like grandfather tortoise slow. It takes forever for it to start getting to the actual drama and stop messing around with the comedy

Some of the comedy is very repetitive, they pull a few of the same jokes a couple times for similar effects (especially in the beginning of the show)

HOW IS SHE EIGHTEEN!? Seriously Hagu is some sort of midget or something, there is no physical way for her to be eighteen.

SHE DOESN'T ACT EIGHTEEN! She acts like a fricking 8 year old half the time, how is she a valid love interest!?

All Ayumi does is sit around and cry. Like seriously, actually sit up and do something instead of moping the entire time.

Shinobu is a real jerk. He really has no respect for others, and sure he can be a good guy once in a while, but seriously most of the time, how does he have friends!?

Takumi is SPOILER. Like seriously, I have no clue why Rika hasn't phoned the cops yet.

I write this out every time SAO gets brought up, but SAO was written as a single novel originally, one that contained ONLY the "Getting trapped in the world" part and the "Rabbit hunting to the end" part. It was written for a LN Contest in Japan, and did well. So people wanted more... problem is, how do you add drama to a series whose main pressure point is already resolved.

And what you get is the result. It's not an excuse, just an explanation.

Also: Be thankful they skipped Mother's Rosario in the Anime, from what I understand (I stopped caring about the series post Aincrad after reading Mother's Rosario). A book that contains so many mood whiplashes, bad characterizations, and drama/story that has NO PLACE in an action story.

I see you have a problem and it's caused by Mushi. Here's the cure/There's no cure lol. Funny how everyone seems to have Mushi-related illnesses and yet I have to explain to everyone I meet what they are.

Funny how everyone seems to have Mushi-related illnesses and yet I have to explain to everyone I meet what they are.

Imagine being a doctor at the turn of the last century, and having to explain to every single one of your patients that the reason they're getting sick is not because of whatever superstition they believe in, but because invisible microbes called 'bacteria' are fucking them up. It's the same thing, and being a history buff I honestly find it a fascinating show because of that aspect, but I can see why some people might think it's repetitive in its nature.

Honestly Steins;Gate has such a slow and boring beginning. If someone is watching it and is not into the characters and their interaction, there's a high chance that they'll drop it. I feel like the anime did a bad job in this regard in comparison to the Visual Novel.

From a person who likes calm slice of life I liked the first half, it was funny and we get to know the characters before the big drama take on so that way you can just feel more all the drama and the plot.

Does it though? Do I care about what happens to the characters in the second half if I don't watch the first half? No, I don't. The first half is crucial to the anime because it lets us develop connections with the characters, and care about them as the second half begins. I don't understand how people can say its boring as it is the only thing giving the second half scope.

Edit: Actually, they way it escalates allows the audience to feel exactly as Okabe does. Stein's;Gate. If the pacing of the first half is any different, the impact isn't as large and the audience isn't as engrossed in the story.

Do I care about what happens to the characters in the second half if I don't watch the first half?

Well, you probably won't care either way if you're dropping the anime 6, 7 episodes in due to nothing really happening.

The first half is crucial to the anime because it lets us develop connections with the characters, and care about them as the second half begins.

Yes, I agree with this. However as I said, if you are annoyed by the characters and their interaction, why would you continue watching unless you know the show picks the pace up at episode 13? I have suggested the show to a dozen of people, and most of the time I need to almost force them to watch it until the thirteenth episode, and at that point people usually get hooked and love it. Most people just don't enjoy the usual almost slice of life character interaction, references to 2ch culture and so on.

I don't understand how people can say its boring as it is the only thing giving the second half scope.

Once again, this part of the story was done better in the Visual Novel, compared to the anime. I love Steins;Gate very much and it is my favorite show, but my opinion on it is biased. Looking at it from an objective viewpoint, it DOES have a boring beginning, because there is barely anything happening aside from putting bananas in microwaves and tutturuu.

Am I the only one who enjoyed the first half? I would even go as far as saying its on equal footing as the second half if not better. I enjoyed the introduction and development of characters, the discussions on time travel, and build up to the second half. But I do enjoy the topic of time travel a lot and love breaking it down in my mind.

Dressrosa could be one of the best arcs in the series. Totally on the filler arcs, I wouldn't even mind if they took months off to wait for the manga to continue further. Now imagine if Madhouse started reanimating OP from the beginning with great pacing and visuals, they already did an excellent job with HunterxHunter.

as I really like this show as well ill throw in that literally every battle for the first few seasons (and many later ones as well) aren't decided by one side doing anything special but simply by the opposing side consisting of complete incompetent retards

I thought the opposite, during the first season the plot is moving at a steady pace while introducing the world and characters. Once the world and characters introduced, the pace slows down considerably after that, with each season representing a shounen-paced arc, which isn't my cup of tea.

This is just a dumb show made to pander to every demographic. It has tons of fanservice, a girl in a wheelchair, mechs, supernatural powers, high school drama, cute characters, pizza, at least two lolis, girls with giant boobs, and politics. Even though I also enjoy the depth it has and how fun it was to watch, I'll still admit there were some stupider parts. Oh, and why does every guy have noodle arms and pointy chins?

It'd be a lot shorter than the burger one, but I know Pizza Hut has done a couple tie-ins with certain anime. Code:Geass obviously is one of them, and I think Darker than Black, K-On!, and maybe Eva did too?

IIRC he had it booby trapped so if anyone opened the desk drawer without disabling the trap it would set the Death Note on fire. Then he could say it was his diary or porn collection or something embarrassing.

It was to prevent fans from going "Hurr durr, why did none of his family members not stumble on it while cleaning his room or something?" Cause you KNOW people would be sticklers about that kind of stuff. I didn't see any harm in them explaining WHY nothing happened along the lines of him being accidentally found out. It also showed off Light's mind and planning a bit before it really got into the mental warfare.

Confusing/convoluted/disjointed narrative is a "problem" with a lot of Ghibli/Miyazaki movies. In my opinion it just makes them fun to rewatch, cause you'll always notice something new and understand it a little bit better.

Mikasa is so boring. She's practically a walking cardboard. Eren has become more of a toy than anything else for people to fight over. He gets kidnapped like fifty times. The only person who has his shit straight in the main trio is Armin.

Remember the Eren that butchered that guy in the cabin that tried to sell Mikasa into slavery and felt no regret afterwards? I wanted that Eren to be the MC.

I was promised a crusade against those Titans, revenge and bloothbaths - a MC that would sacrifice almost everything to fullfil his vendetta and to save his loved ones, including those humans that want to hold him back. It just feels like he lost his determination and his focus on the task and no longer acts in his own interest, but rather just follows orders. He kinda lost his edge - I wanted a damned radical !

Mikasa is just too OP. Halfway through the show I thought she would lose her abilities to some degree ( broken leg, ripped off hand or smt. like that) to throw her into some existential crisis, cause she lost the one thing that defined her the most. Never happened, no character development at all.

Always suspected Pixies and the blonde commander to be secretly titans or to know more than they tell, they felt very suspicious from time to time .. but nothing along those lines happened ( maybe in the novels ?). And to be completely honest - the pacing was quite bad.

Still give it a 8.5, because the setting is just awesome, the art and animation is top notch and it kept me constantly on edge.

Ghost in the Shell SAC series (both). The choice to not do multiple story arcs over the course of the series and instead to do 1 main story told in chunks throughout the series, mixed with singular episodes between them will probably not be to everyone's tastes. Whilst the singular episodes are still high quality, they are filler to most people. They have little to no relevance on the main storyline and are always inferior to the main storyline as a result, even if they do provide some fantastic backstory and characterization to the show.

The target audience is also primarily adults. The show goes in depth into lots of highly philosophical topics and at times the conversations can be quite daunting. It's very much a show you have to be engaged into, especially the first time you watch, to fully understand.

It can be kinda slow. It's not really a very action-y show. There is some, of course, but it's primarily investigative in it's approach to Section 9's work.

Finally, the Tachikomas may feel out of place to some, and like they get in the way.

Great counter-points for GITS:SAC. My biggest concern with GITS is the lack of access for audiences other than adults.

Most people in this subreddit and anime watchers are generally younger, middle or high school age people who usually watch shonen. I actually watched GITS for the first time when I was 16 or 17. I've rewatched the show several times over the last 9 years and several of the plot points and intrigue were a little high level for me back then. I actually appreciate the show even more now for its message but in this day and age it might be harder for mainstream anime watchers to get into even though it is very highly ranked.

I think this could be due to the change in demographics of anime watchers from the 1980's to late 1990's when show's like Dragonball Z started to become mainstream. Anime used to be a niche and geared towards adults and GITS was a show from a different era.

Yeah, it definitely feels inaccessible nowadays. The biggest show of that is whenever there's a thread about the "best" or most "popular" anime GitS never gets mentioned, or if it does it's like once or twice with no upvotes. That being despite how highly regarded it is amongst the community and in general.

It's kind of a shame really, because I genuinely believe it's the best anime universe there is, across the movies, series and OVAs, it's just too heavily targeted towards older audiences, which is part of the reason I think I like it so much.

Haha, but hang around in /r/Cyberpunk for a bit, and you will see GitS glorified to the maximum!

You are right, of course. But I don't think it's such a bad thing. I feel GitS - both in terms of the movies or series, as the core concept beneath all its adaptation, cannot be watered down in any way.

Its universe is needed, along with let's say the works of Satoshi Kon, to prove that there is a straightforward maturity present in anime. All along the other not-so-straightforward-maturity, of course. :)

The first episode of spice and wolf is pretty bad...I'd say...and there's also some unnecessary fan service in the first two episodes that goes against the tone of the rest of the show, which probably turns off a lot of viewers.

It also has a very inconclusive ending and you will need to go and get the light novels in order to continue the story.

Wow, that's a tough one. I mean, I guess the show could use more Balalaika, particularly in the 1st season. That's all I got though. I mean, if you'd not mentioned the dub we'd have something easy to pick at. Arguably the best/most fitting dub there has been.

You don't really see all that much progression (aside from Black Lagoon). It's a series of disjointed adventures that could pretty much be jumbled about in any order without affecting the series at all.

We used to play this game on another forum, it was fun until everyone gets butthurt. ;) Can't think of any anime right now so...Shaft: Never seen a studio so popular that did so little work. All those reused scenes, static shots or slow panning shots with very little actual animation. I imagine they have a program where they take all their previous art/animation assets and build an episode piece by piece lego style.KyoAni: Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is never try. KyoAni taking those lessons to heart with the stream of dumb and pandering shit shows they've done over the past couple of years.

The very episodic nature of the show hurt its over all story, which was never bought up except for the few scattered episodes that touched on it. I had no reason to care about who Vicious was, he could of well been generic space katana bad guy.

That's pretty much the Watanabe formula: 20-something plot-of-the-week episodes and then oh-shit-I-need-to-end-the-story. It's funny that Space Dandy ultimately has a better sense of continuity than both Bebop and Champloo.

I really love Cowboy Bebop but that anime is the reason my favorite anime, another space western released in 1998, never gets anywhere near the attention it deserved. To me, Cowboy Bebop is that fucking sibling or cousin that everyone else in the family compares you too and because they're such a goddamn wonder-child you never look good by comparison.

It's weird, Katanagatari is my favourite anime ever but I put off starting it for so long because of the art style being too strange. Then I finally watched it and realised it's fucking beautiful, especially in motion.

Hopefully you've learned from your experience and are now more open minded about unconventional art styles. Personally, I love it when shows go for funky art styles, it's a delight to see something that doesn't just look like everything else.

Animation is lackluster due to shitty budget (you can even see in the next episode previews that they were finishing backgrounds week to week). We get treated to amazing destruction animation in the first scene of the show and then never again

First four episodes are filler-y character stories that are necessary for Vash's characterization but are honestly pretty boring for the most part

Then we get another piece of filler that manages to break the continuity of the story after we finally get the ball rolling in episode 12 (seriously, try fitting Little Arcadia into the show's timeline. You can't!)

Voice acting can be subpar at times to a the VA's inexperience

Lack of proper backstory for Legato

Meryl and Milly stop being useful people after episode 8 (with an exception for episode 12)

Knives is introduced as an interesting foil to Vash with a fairly reasonable alternative viewpoint ("You have to kill spiders if you want to save butterflies")... and then in the present he's Crazy McPsychopath and any legitimate argument he might make is overshadowed by his craziness.

"Oh hey, we're ending this show; better cram all that backstory we haven't gotten around to into the first half of the last episode."

There's a recap episode. I know they're common, but they're not good.

Yeah, Little Arcadia is really jarring in sequence, and is just a mediocre episode even taken on its own. Though I really liked episodes 2 and 3.

Yeah this was my only real complaint as well. It's just too innocent? Idealistic? Unrealistic? It kind of makes it feel like that "romance" is thrown in there and set just for the sake of Moritaka having a love interest in the future even though they're actually cute together. It's hard to get behind the logic of it, you just feel it's kind of pitiful.

Yeah the romance was really unrealistic IMO. The only reason I felt that it worked overall for me was because of how the show was similarly written (often also really idealistic, very positive, etc.) so it fit within the series.

So basically it's wasn't created to be as deep as most people think it is

This can never be true. What ever you see will have the value you think it has. If you are able to interpret the show so it makes sense to you it is a valid explaination and thus correct. I wonder when people get that interpretation is not about what the artist wants to tell you but what you can tell about the art.

No, it can be true. I can create something without any special meaning and people could read into it and see more. You're right that artist intention and interpretation can be different and you can enjoy something for more than it was intended based on your interpretation.
I think you meant to counter what I said about enjoying it. I still enjoy it very much, I mean we were supposed to criticize our favorite anime. I was just disappointed when I found out the truth.

I feel like the show does a good job showing how both he and Mikasa are slightly unhinged in their own ways (and poor Armin was one of the few willing to put up with it since he was kinda desperate for friends at the time). Eren's obsession isn't supposed to be normal or particularly rational.

Oh look a wall of text, oh look it's gone. I probably spent an additional 10 minutes every episode just paused or rewatching the last few seconds of a scene. I actually kinda like how they fit in novel excerpts like that to further help explain the character's thoughts, even if it's hard to watch an episode all in one go. Overall 10/10

"Confusing" backgrounds and flashing walls of text are the least of Bakemonogatari's problems. Robotic characters with nonsensical (if not utterly non-existent) motivations is the most glaring issue. The pretext that sexualizing underage (even by Japanese standards) girls is "deep" is another significant one. And ultimately it's just another typical wish fulfillment harem fantasy - not even the most clever dialogue can save it from that cesspool of a genre. And finally, a lot of reliance on Japanese wordplay means much of the writing it's so often lauded for doesn't translate well.

If "she's in love with Araragi" suffices as a legitimate motivation to you, then sure. It does not to me.

Furthermore, why they are in love with Araragi is completely unexplained (at least in Bakemonogatari, with the exception of Senjougahara, whose feelings seem to come from "Well, he helped me out that one time, so I guess I owe him sex"), making them appear even more shallow and robotic. Presumably the only reason they're so enamored with Araragi is because he's the only male human being they ever interact with, so they have to desire him by default. Both aspects of this are red flags of shallow female characters written for the sole purpose of fanservice and wish fulfillment (real women, and similarly, well-written, fleshed-out female characters, have many men in their lives in the forms of friends, family, and lovers, and if by some bizarre circumstance they did only have one, they do not necessarily have any compulsion or obligation to have romantic attraction towards him).

because if you're referring to that she spends most of the Mayoi arc poking at him to get various reactions and asking him leading questions just to hear his response, at the conclusion of the arc saying that she likes him because he didn't have ulterior motives when helping her and that she likes talking to him and has fun with their conversations.

Mayoi is Araragi's friend not a love interest

Kanbaru was not in love with Araragi either

Nadeko being in "love" doesn't really have much to do with her Bake arc and isn't all that prevalent until the later seasons where the nature of her "love" is only shown to be a symptom of the mess of problems she actually has.

Hanekawa is the only one in Bake with a motive that is really tied to her affection for Araragi which is still only a part of it. They also give an explanation for why she likes him. She built up in her head a fairy tale version of a person in Araragi because of the supernatural nature of their relationship due to her rampant escapism. There's also another 2 arcs that expand further on her personality to explain why she acts the way she does including how she copes with her family situation.

Everyone else has their own reasons for what they do and it's almost never because they are "in love with Araragi."

And when it is the motivation what exactly is wrong with that?

EDIT: You seem to have added some more thought which make me think you do not understand the show. Half of them are not in love with Araragi, Senjougahara think she might be after he saves her but thinks it's just misplaced gratitude. That was the whole point of the snail arc other than to introduce Hachikuji. Hanekawa has a history with Araragi over spring break and golden week as well as being his classmate. Nadeko is not really in love with Araragi as much as she uses him a shield to avoid dealing with the boys in her class, one of her many avoidance techniques. Hachikuji just befriended Araragi but considering her condition it's not surprising she developed some feelings for him as almost nobody else can see or interact with her. Shinobu's relationship is in a word complicated. I have not read the source material so I'm not the best person to explain it.

The rest aren't even attracted to him.

he's the only male human being they ever interact with

This is a quirk of the narrative style. It's told from the point of view of Araragi for the most part. Other males are mostly non existent because they are unimportant to him and the story, not that they don't exist in the girl's lives. As the point of view moves around so does the focus on the background characters.

The comedy fell flat at times (sometimes for entire episodes), and the show's seemingly episodic nature may be a bit off-putting for many anime fans who've grown accustomed to their shows containing continuous plots.

Unecessary homosexual undertones between Albert and The Count (all that blushing) that don't serve the story in any way. It's never brought up, explained, or elaborated on. It's just something that happens and distracts from the show.

Albert Morcerf is a pansy, and way too innocent for way too long.

CGI mech duels, CGI backdrops in Paris. They look like stuff from a 90s video game.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:

The animation is fucking terrible sometimes, like 1/10 terrible with straight lines for shadows on human bodies. I know the manga was drawn in the 80s but it doesn't mean they have to use 80s animation techniques.

Many Stands are lazy bullshit pulled straight out of Araki's ass, and are often defeated with Deus Ex Machina Star Platinum's ever-increasing list of OP abilities. Even before Stands there was OP Hamon's ever-increasing list of ridiculous RIPPLE abilities.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

The plot is childishly ridiculous and incredibly stupid.

The background characters (most of Dai-Gurren Brigade) are a bunch of caricatures with no depth or importance. They seem to exist just to fill up time in an episode with their stereotypical behavior.

The resolution of the fights are even more of an ass-pull than JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, with our heroes winning battles because they simply wanted to win really really bad.

It's a show that is mostly only notable for the fact that no one really gets what the fuck happens in it by the end. Almost every character in the show is basically fucked up, annoying, and/or assholish beyond redemption (Exceptions being Kaji, who gets killed, and maybe Misato depending on your feelings).

The main character's a pathetic wimp who has daddy issues despite being abandoned and then spending what appeared to be an entirely uneventful next couple of years chilling with someone. The "sexy" character is an repugnant bitch whose personality should outright make anyone want to punch her. Rei genuinely is pretty emotionless and except for plot points where the only point of her existence is that she exists you could replace her actions with one or more irrelevant people and it would work just as well.

And that's just the regular characters.

And then of course the Rebuild's Attempts to "clean things up" involved a 10 year time skip that has now put us in an entirely different scenario than the original and we have no fucking clue what's going on.

Oregairu's main character is a semi delusional person who hides social anxiety by making himself seem overly apathetic. Similar to the book Catcher in the rye, which apparently made people go around shooting presidents and shit. Would you want to be similar to that?